Drowning
by Divine Sally Bowles
Summary: A oneshot written to resolve the end of Walk On Water. Meredith's thoughts and reflections as she drowns. T for minor language.


**Hey everybody! My name is Trai, and I've just revived my account after about four years' worth of a hiatus. This is a oneshot I wrote over the course of four days, meant to resolve the cliffhanger to "Walk On Water". Keep in mind that I wrote this blind—with no knowledge of what would happen the next week, hence why the ending is vague. Still, I hope you guys like it! (It's set to "Make This Go On Forever" by Snow Patrol, one of my favorite songs by them, and the one the end of "Walk On Water" was set to.)**

"Drowning"

**Please don't let this turn into something it's not**

**I can only give you everything I've got**

**I can't be as sorry as you think I should**

**But I still love you more than anyone else could**

I always thought I wouldn't so much mind drowning, if I had to die. It wasn't something I thought about often—no matter what Derek thinks, I'm not suicidal—but occasionally, during one of those sleepless nights in med school, or in my first couple of days at Seattle Grace where I'd seen someone die, I thought about it.

They say it's supposed to be peaceful.

Trust me, it's anything but.

I can't kick out—it's fear, maybe, or shock. Whatever it is, I'm paralyzed, and the water's too much. But neither do I want to die.

_Maybe Derek really is my knight in shining… whatever…_

But Derek's not here to pull me out this time.

This time, I'm really drowning.

This time, I'm on my own…

**All that I keep thinking throughout this whole flight**

**Is it could take my whole damn life to make this right**

**This splintered mast I'm holding on won't save me long**

**Because I know fine well that what I did was wrong**

I've seen people die before from drowning. Kids, adults; people who spend their lives in water, people who don't. I've heard the accounts from people who have drowned or nearly drowned.

Hell, when I was seventeen, I was a lifeguard. I saved a little boy, once.

* * *

_This was so totally not like _Baywatch.

_That was how Moira roped me into it. "C'mon, Mer," she pleaded. "It'll be so cool."_

"_I'm not doing this, Moira," I mumbled, shutting off my stereo and flipping over onto my back. My hair, recently died pink, had me grounded for a month._

_Mom had been pissed, but it was worth it._

_Okay, so it wasn't just the hair. Maybe it was because she'd also found me making out with this one guy on the couch._

_(It wasn't my fault that the patient had bled out during surgery and she'd come home early!)_

"_Mer, I don't want to do this alone! You're the one with the surgeon mom! You know what you're doing! C'mon, Mer, please?" Moira begged. "Maybe Dom will think it's cool!"_

_I thought about it. I did like Dom._

"_Okay, okay, fine," I grumbled._

"_Seriously?!" Moira squealed, excited._

"_Yeah. Sure. Whatever."_

_And that was how, three weeks later, we were on the beach._

_I had my lips pressed to those of an unconscious little boy, desperately trying to get him to breathe again._

_His older brother had taken him surfing. Innocent enough, until the little boy had hit a rock and started to drown._

"_One… two… three…" I held the kid's nose and pressed my lips to his, breathing into his mouth. I could hear his older brother behind me._

"_Jimmy… oh, God, Jimmy, c'mon… don't die, please don't die…"_

"_Calm down, sir," Moira said nervously, though the guy was around our age. "Mer's got it under control…"_

"_Breathe, dammit!" I whispered under my breath, not loud enough for anyone to hear._

_I did the compressions again, pressing my mouth to his and giving him another shaky breath. I was so scared. What if he died?_

Is this how Mom feels?

_Suddenly, as I pulled my mouth away, Jimmy choked and sputtered. He turned his head to the side and coughed up water._

_He was breathing._

"_Oh my God," I said weakly. "Oh my God…"_

_I'd done it… I'd saved a life…_

"_Mer!" Moira hugged me tightly, as did the kid's older brother._

"_You did it, Mer; you saved someone! You're a hero!" Moira told me enthusiastically._

"_Yeah," I whispered. "Yeah…"_

_It was only later, after my celebratory dinner with Moira, her mom, and my mom that I broke down crying in my room._

I could've killed someone today…

* * *

Our body has a natural response to being submerged under water. We hold our breath for as long as we can.

When it gets to be too much, we try to breathe, even when we're underwater.

My breath gives out.

The water comes rushing in.

**The last girl and the last reason to make this last for as long as I could**

**First kiss and the first time that I felt connected to anything**

**The weight of water, the way you told me t****o look past everything I had ever learned  
****  
The final word in the final sentence you ever uttered to me was love**

I'm not sure how much longer I have.

That little girl? She's afraid. I can't even be sure that she'll be able to call for help. And that man I helped is in pain, in shock. He can't do anything.

_I'm going to die…_

I'm starting to lose my focus. I keep thinking of a lot of things… pointless things…

That little girl and I, we're alike. She doesn't talk when she's scared, and I don't either.

There's a reason why I don't.

The first time I really and truly saw blood, I froze.

* * *

"_Oh my God," I heard Mom whisper._

_I was eight years old, in the backseat of my mom's car, half-asleep. It had been late at night, my mom driving home after the hospital's Christmas party. She'd left me with her friend April._

_I noticed we were slowing down. "Mom?" I murmured._

"_It's okay, honey… we'll be home soon…" my mom told me._

_She got out of the car. So did I._

_There was a car overturned on the side of the road, which had iced over. Lying in the snow, bleeding, was a man who looked a little older than my mom._

_I backed against the car a little. I'd never seen so much blood before._

_My mom knelt down by the man, checking his pulse. "Thready, but there," I heard her murmur._

"_Meredith?" she looked at me. "Can you give me your sweatshirt? I need to stop this bleeding."_

_I couldn't move. Couldn't think._

"_Meredith!" my mom repeated._

_Finally she took the sweatshirt and pressed it to the bleeding wound. I stayed where I was, still frozen._

_Eventually a car drove by, and my mom was able to send the driver to get an ambulance._

_The man we found that night was saved, but not because of me…_

* * *

For months, I had nightmares.

Eventually, I got over it. Still, sometimes, if a situation commands my immediate attention, I freeze.

The human body loves to screw us over.

**We have got through so much worse than this before**

**What's so different this time that you can't ignore**

**You say it is much more than just my last mistake**

**And we should spend some time apart for both our sakes**

There was another time, when I was eighteen. Faulty wiring caused Moira's house, only a block from mine, to burn.

_When the phone rang, it was two o'clock in the morning. I stumbled out of my bedroom to answer it. Mom was asleep on the couch._

"_Hello?" I answered groggily._

"_Mer?" It was Moira. She sounded like she was crying._

"_Moira? What's—?"_

"_Look out your window…"_

_I opened the kitchen curtains and realized that a block over, there was a blaze._

"_Oh my God, Moira, your—_?"

"_Yeah… can you and your mom come over? Please? We're at the Donaldson's…"_

"_Yeah. Yeah. I'll be right there, Moira. Don't worry; it'll be okay…"_

_I hung up and went over to the couch. I felt bad for waking up my mom; she'd gotten home late that night, but still, I knew that she'd want to help Moira too. "Mom. Mom!" I said, gently shaking my mom._

"_Meredith? What is it?"_

"_Moira's house is burning_—_"_

"_What?!" Mom sat up immediately, kicking off the blanket._

"_She just called… they need us, Mom…"_

"_I know. Come on."_

_My mom led me outside into the cold air. When I reached the Donaldson house, Moira grabbed me and hugged me tight. My mom and Mrs. Parker hugged too._

"_Where's Jamie?" I asked, referring to Moira's older brother, home from college on break. "And your dad?"_

"_They got burned," Moira said into my shoulder. "The ambulances haven't come yet."_

"_Meredith and I can help," Mom told us, her voice going into the command mode I knew she affected in the O.R._

_She ushered me into the Donaldson's kitchen._

_Faced with the burns, I blanked._

It still happens, occasionally. There was that one time, faced with the girl on one of my first days at Seattle Grace, that I froze. I threw up afterwards, still freaked out by the fact that I could've killed someone.

No one knows I panic, except for Cristina, but I've sworn her to silence.

Despite what my mother told me years before, I can be a good surgeon.

I can hold someone's life in my hands.

**The last girl and the last reason to make this last for as long as I could**

**First kiss and the first time that I felt connected to anything**

**The weight of water, the way you told me ****to look past everything I had ever learned**

**The final word in the final sentence you ever uttered to me was love**

This morning, I wanted so much to disappear.

Everything's falling apart. There's so much pressure, from all sides.

My mom. She was lucid for one day, _one day_, and the only thing she says to me is how disappointed she is in me. And I avoided her, and when I finally got the nerve to talk to her, she was gone.

It's not fair. It's not fair that I had her for just a day. No matter how many fights we had, no matter how many times she put her job before me, _I love her._ She is my mother and nothing, _nothing_ can change that.

I don't even know if she thinks that about me… 

There's Cristina, and George, and Izzie. Cristina's not telling me something. I hate when she does that. It's never a good thing. The last time we put off talking about something, she ended up in surgery, losing her baby. And George… I like Callie, I really do, but no matter how much he says it wasn't, him getting married to her was pretty spur-of-the-moment. I've been worried about him since his dad died. Izzie. I love her like a sister, and like a sister, I worry. She was so upset over Denny, and then there was the check and the clinic…

I can't do this.

I can't take this.

I wanted to just disappear.

Now that I am, I don't want to…

**The last girl and the last reason to make this last for as long as I could**

**First kiss and the first time that I felt connected to anything**

**The weight of water, the way you told me ****to look past everything I had ever learned**

**The final word in the final sentence you ever uttered to me was love**

I know that I don't have much longer. I'm starting to black out, which isn't a good thing.

I try to force myself to stay awake, try to swim upwards.

Nothing's working… nothing's working… don't panic… 

It's pretty damn hard not to panic at this point.

There's water pouring into my lungs. There's no way I can survive this.

_I am going to die…_

_Try, dammit… try to stay alive… you can do this…_

I can't die. There's so much I have to do. I have to… I _need_ to… I need to tell Derek I love him, I need to tell George I'm happy for him, I need to help Izzie, I need to be there for my mom…

Breathe, dammit… 

I can't breathe. I can't breathe, because I'm sinking. I'm drowning.

**And I don't know where to look  
****  
My words just break and melt  
****  
Please just save me from this darkness**

**Please just save me from this darkness**

There's nothing else I can do, and I know it.

I can't stop this.

I'm about to die.

_Please…_

_Somebody…_

_Please…_

And then…

Finally, finally, the breath of welcome air after a storm—literally, and figuratively.

Hands.

Pulling me from the water.

I can breathe again.

**And I don't know where to look  
****  
My words just break and melt  
****  
Please just save me from this darkness**

**Please just save me from this darkness**


End file.
